After which we both rocked feverishly with a lust that possessed us beyond any consideration of our position or situation. Her knees locked around my ribs, her breasts flying free—both of them now uncovered—in the sea breeze, her hair streaming behind her, Elena moved with a fury she couldn’t control. Spurred on by the swaying movement of the crow’s nest, I matched her motion, my body afire with lust, reaching deeper with each thrust as if to penetrate the very core of her with the oncoming explosion of my passion.
The sea around us had grown choppy. The mast swayed from one impossible angle to its opposite with the pitch and toss of the vessel. It was as if the angry sea reflected the raging battle on the deck beneath us. And the violence of our movements took on the tempo of the swaying crow’s nest.
The result was that as it leaned to starboard Elena rose upward and was thrust half out of the nest, a seminude houri in the throes of passion, hovering over the fray as if in defiance of the laws of gravity. When the ship rolled to port, Elena sank down and it was I who emerged like some jack-in-the-box (a thousand pardons for the phrase) on an aerial seesaw, beating the empty air with my lust, flailing the heights with only my fulcrum primed by the recently devirginized señorita. The motion was dizzying and soon I was keeping a delicate balance between seasickness and sex. With each downward movement my desire would build, with each upswing it would subside into nausea no matter how hard I tried to keep my eyes closed to avoid the ro1ler-coaster view swinging beneath me. All in all, the sensation was indescribable; it was quite an experience!
The vertigo of one upswing hit me so hard that panic forced my eyes open. They focused on a figure halfway up the mast and climbing fast. On the deck below two pirate corpses testified that Pedro had disposed of his attackers. Now he was on the way to the rescue of his betrothed.
A sword dripping blood was clutched menacingly in one hand. A dagger nestled between his teeth. His beard bristled and his eyes flashed. Call it instinct, but somehow I knew that Pedro wasn’t prepared to be nonviolent. And his hostility could only mount when he realized I’d usurped his bridegroom’s prerogative.
“Pardon me.” I reached under Elena, grasped the fiery plumpness of her derrière, shoved upwards and neatly disimpaled her.
“But you haven’t—” she started to protest.
“It’s better to have loved and leave to live to lust another day.” I mixed up a metaphor for her as I scrambled to my feet.
“Look!” She pointed with wonder. “They’re turning blue!”
“Better a frustrati than a castrati,” I told her as Pedro’s hand appeared over the edge of the crow’s nest. “Ta-ta!” I pole vaulted out the other side, dived for an adjacent mast, missed it, clutched at a billowing sail and flapped in the breeze for an instant.
Then, as if in slow motion, the sail began to rip. Slowly, I descended as the material parted under my weight. Meanwhile Pedro had reversed his direction and was scampering down the mast to intercept me. We reached deck at approximately the same moment. There was about six yards between us. Pedro leaped to close the distance, his blade stretched full length in front of him. I leaped to maintain the margin of safety, my “weapon” also firmly pointed at the ready.
“En garde!” Pedro lunged, the tip of his blade attempting to engage the tip of my manhood.
Shyly, I avoided crossing swords with him. Holding mine by the hilt and retreating rapidly, I managed to keep him from establishing contact. Sensitive to the danger my manhood was in, I turned tail and bolted. In hot pursuit, Pedro slashed wildly.
“Touché!” I exclaimed as he nicked my tooshy. “You drew blood. You win. I concede.”
Still Pedro continued to slash at me.
“Uncle!” I tried again. “I give up.” But he wasn’t reading me. Desperately, I tried to remember what the Spanish for “Uncle” was. As he lunged again I decided it probably wouldn’t help anyway. “You’re not being sporting!” I reprimanded him over my shoulder as I ran. “I don’t even have a rapier.”
His reply was a maddened lunge. I jumped high and his blade passed between my legs, just low enough to miss his target. He shouted a torrent of angry Spanish.
“Sorry, but I didn’t quite get that,” I told him on the run.
“Engleesh pig! Scum of the sea! Son of a whoremonger! Despoiler of virgins!”
“Ah,” I observed, “you speak English. We can communicate. Now then, why don’t we talk this over calmly before somebody gets hurt?”
His response almost lopped off my left ear. I realized it wasn’t enough to surmount the language barrier. And I didn’t have time to explain to him that his aggression was probably a neurotic symptom having to do with his early relationship with his father. I jumped out of range again, sliding haphazardly over the slick of fresh blood spreading over the deck.
My back was to the bulkhead alongside the quarterdeck now. Around me bloodthirsty pirates were finishing off the last of the Spanish crewmen. To starboard a large man-o’-war hovered, its cannons still smoking, the boarding planks still linking it to the Spanish galleon. The three-master flew the skull and crossbones under a British flag, but it was of Spanish design, probably captured from the Spanish Navy and turned into a warship for the pirates. To port some thirty-six other ships strung out over the horizon, each flying the pirate flag, some in combination with national emblems, some with only the outlaw banner. Any one of them would have been more than a match for the Spanish merchant ship on which I found myself. It was a formidable armada. In all history there were only two such fleets which sailed under the pirate flag.
The most famous was the bucaneer flotilla assembled by Jean Lafitte to rout the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. The pirate Lafitte’s victory was to write a shining page in the history of the Americas. The buccaneer fleet which preceded it wrote one of the blackest.
That force was assembled by Sir Henry Morgan—the infamous Captain Morgan who sailed the Spanish Main preying on ships of every nation. The British—always superb diplomats—solved the problem of Captain Morgan by granting him the status of a privateer in exchange for his allowing British vessels safe conduct. Later they knighted him and he was appointed Governor of Port Royal, the pirate stronghold in Jamaica. From Bermuda to the shores of Central America there was no more feared man than Captain Morgan. He was the Atilla of the Antilles (Greater and Lesser), the terror of the Caribbean, as fearless as he was merciless.
Captain Morgan assembled his pirate fleet in the year 1671 to execute a scheme as bold and daring as it was dangerous. His aim was to sack the city of Panama, the wealthiest city in the New World, the richest jewel in the Americas, the Spanish bastion known as “The Cup of O Gold”.
It was to be the first, last, most horrendous and most successful storming of a city by a pirate force. In addition to the officers and crews, there were two thousand fighting men under Morgan’s command. They included thieves and murderers, the dregs of the criminal world from every nation, ex-slaves -- Carib Indians, African Negroes and English and Portuguese whites—out for revenge on their former Spanish masters. Only such a man as Morgan could have held these cutthroats under control and convinced them to accept his discipline with the promise of a share in the plunder of Panama.
“Captain Morgan!”
It all fell into place as I heard the name shouted from the quarterdeck above me. Still managing to avoid the onslaught of the angry Pedro, the scene slipped into my consciousness peripherally. The shouting of the name had been a warning from one of the buccaneers. It served notice of an attack from the rear.
On the quarterdeck a large man, tall, stout, but powerful rather than fat, responded to the warning. Flowing black moustaches danced in the wind and a small, sharp goatee reversed direction to aim down the curved length of a cutlass. Barely breaking his rhythm, the pirate lopped off the arm of the Spaniard attacking him from the rear and continued to parry the strokes of the two adversaries in front of him. The action was as magnificent as the man. And the man could be none other than the fabled Captain Morgan.